Sexy Bounce Rate - Or Not?
"If you could only choose one metric to look at, Bounce Rate might be your best choice" or so says Google's Avinash Kaushik, summing up the user perspective as "I came, I puked, I left", leaving you wondering "Where is all this crappy traffic coming from? "
DUFF INFORMATION
But this is a mega oversimplification, and seriously misleading. The numbers come from Google Analytics, and is NOT taken into account during Google's ranking of the site.
Google has other metrics showing that almost 30% of the bounced traffic was from visitors who have been to a site 9 or more times. These are definitely not people "puking and leaving".
People can be on your page, spending significant amounts of time enjoying the information, and then they “bounce”. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.
The measure of success for content sites is not whether the reader bounces, but whether they read the article and - more importantly - come back later.
See more at: http://www.analytics-ninja.com/blog/2012/06/google... and at http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/what...
RETHINKING
One key thing to come out of this was don't spend all your time and attention on your Home Page. The page that matters is the user's Entry Page - the page they land on after clicking the link in the SERP.
AVERAGES HIDE THE TRUTH
The average income of myself and Bill Gates is $20m. Your average visitor stays only a few seconds.
LOOK BEHIND THE AVERAGES
The facts, when you look closer, show that most visitors come only once, but 30% of them come back over 100 times. Design the site for those who keep coming back, not for those who come only once.
Recent Comments
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Very good post, Chris. You can find all kinds of info on Google Analytics. I noticed my New Visitors averaged about 58 second on the site but my Returning Visitors (17%) averaged almost 11 minutes. That made me feel better.
I kind of thought so but my Bounce Rate varies between high 50%'s to high 60%'s. Don't understand that.
If they stay for 11 minutes, then leave, it's both a bounce and a very good thing. Don't sweat it.
Hi Chris, I thought perhaps you'll might want the link you were trying to attach.... Here it is: //http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgfjo6IIf4
Shirley
I have the link, it's in my blog post.
I see what you've done here. You've lopped off the http but left the double slash. Neat trick. But Robert managed to include the real, clickable, link.
Yeah, I'm waiting for Robert to come back and explain how he did it.
I've just realised that the conversation about Robert is actually in a different thread, so it looks out of place here. Take a look at the bottom of the following post and you'll see what I mean. Learning & Laughter 22 - Not What it Seems
Yes, I came from that post. It was Dennis prestones who brought up that subject, so I thought to see what I can do as I'm familiar with sharing fun YouTube Videos. I always open Robert's funnies and blogs. He's very learned. Blessings.....
Shirley
Thanks for the information Chris. Don't stop sending them! Let's say I have a revenue generating website some time in future (not to far, I hope) where will I get these statistics?
It's all in the training, but much much later. There is no value in trying to measure data until you have some data to measure.
My rough rule of thumb is forget about analysing and statistics until you have at least 500 visitors per month.
Yeah, they showed up perfectly while I was creating the blog but they disappeared when I saved it.
I gave it a few minutes, just in case it was a load-time issue. Then I put the links back in (after I had to go find them again 'cos I didn't save them). That didn't work either.
From your comment, it's a no-no.
I don't know what the issue may be, but at the bottom of Robert's (boomergp08) last blog, he was able to successfully post a link to a YouTube video. Learning & Laughter 22 - Not What it Seems Perhaps he'll chime in here.
Dennis
Interesting.
When I put in the link, exactly like Robert seems to have done, the vid landed like an iframe. It was impressive. But when I hit the Publish, both the vid and the link vanished.
I messed around a bit with "bending" the link, but in the end decided it was to problematic.
I look forward to being enlightened by Robert.
I'm just playing here - sorry 'bout stealing this little piece of your thread Kathy.
The link to the YouTube video in Robert's thread was an "https" (secure) link, rather than a conventional "http" link. I use the browser plugin "https everywhere", which gives me a secure link at https://youtu.be. I thought I'd try it below, and indeed, I did get a secure share link to share the video:
https://youtu.be/wFK3zedxSEQ
I also thought I'd just try copying the URL of the YouTube video right from the address bar, and see if that passed muster at WA so others could get to a YouTube video that is cited. Unfortunately, WA won't accept a URL with a question mark in it (and the YouTube URL comes complete with parameters behind a question mark), so I went to https://goo.gl/ to shorten it.
The shortened URL is below:
https://goo.gl/VjX42n
Sooo... time to hit the Reply to Comment button and see the results...
Eureka! the links don't embed the video, but they get the job done. At the end of the day, a ray of hope...
Dennis
Nope! Not the answer. I didn't use the link from the address bar. I used the one from the share bar, which doesn't have the question mark. Still didn't work.
But I have managed to get the link in now.
I copied the link from Robert's post, then edited it. I edits as if it is a text link. You can't insert a text link in a post, but you can edit one that's already there. That's seriously warped.
Well it seems like a long winded way of doing things to me! Good you worked out how to do it though. :)
There is a problem with getting the videos to stick as a video frame. If you paste the link and hit enter for any reason it will open the video frame but when you published the post the video would be gone. But you can get just the link to stick.
So what I do is...
1) Write my entire blog first all the way until I am finished.
2) Then I locate the spot I want to place the video link.
3) I press enter once to put the cursor on a clear line by itself (meaning I do not place the video link within a paragraph of text).
4) I then paste the video link.
5) Then I click publish.
The link will stick when doing it this way.
I did that, several times, even after I copy/pasted your link. Yours stayed, mine didn't.
After you pasted the share link did you do anything other than clicking publish? Because if you did, I do not think it will work. Placing the link should be the very last thing you do to your blog content before clicking publish.
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"Design the site for those who keep coming back, not for those who come only once."
... great point!!!